It was a little after 9 p.m. on Friday night when I was jostled out of sleep by a loud, insistent knock at my door. Half-awake, pants-less, wrapped up in the sheets of The Commander Hotel in Ocean City, I ran thru the options of who was on the other side. Possibly, it was my friendly neighbors from next door with an invitation- pass. I was in a shit mood, and had eaten 100mg of Robhots infused gummies that morning, which is why I was in bed at 9pm on a Friday at the beach. The knock came again. Maybe those high school kids that had commented on how high I looked at check-in had figured out what room I was in and were looking to score- hard pass. I let another knock go by and figured whoever it was would get the hint. The phone rang, which seemed pressed of my visitor, but if I continued to ignore them they'd go away and I could resume my slumber. The sound of the door handle turning was a shock.
"HEY WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?!?" I shouted into the light.
"You're being evicted for smoking marijuana," came a gruff reply.
"WHAT??? I'M SLEEPING!"
"You're not sleeping," this guy said like I was his teenage son and didn't want to get up for school. "Come on. Get your stuff and leave." He started to enter the room properly but I shouted something about needing clothes and he stayed back.
"I don't understand. I'm not smoking. I'm a medical marijuana patient. I'm allowed to have my medicine," I tried to explain as I threw on a dry pair of trunks.
"Oh, come on. This entire floor smells like weed," the Commander Hotel guy said to me, big fucker, too. Maybe he even played back-up O-line back in the day, but now his body had settled into Grimace proportions and his thin, dark hair was receding. He was maybe in his mid-forties, not much older than your Gentleman. "This is private property and you signed an agreement at check-in about not smoking in the hotel. You have to leave."
That's when I heard the walkie-talkies out in the hall. Looking past, I could see a police uniform. Well, shit. I'm not inclined to fuck around with cops, especially cornered. The fuzz can say anything they want- that I threatened, assaulted, resisted. Plant a sheet of acid or an unregistered firearm. Hell, they could mis-measure the weight of the weed I had on hand, or the length of my hunting knife, and then I'm totally jammed up, in the system, jumping through legal hoops. It looked like I was being given a free out for compliance, so I took it.
Handy tip I know from going up dirt-fucking poor- when you're being evicted, once the police have entered the premises, they will follow you around everywhere. For now, they were staying outside, so I hastily began re-packing, talking to myself out loud as I did so that they knew I was doing what they asked while I remained out of view. I gathered the flowers and concentrate up quickly and tossed them into my suitcase, my cash and blade from the safe next. It occurred to me that if The Commander Hotel staff & Co had entered the room while I was absent, which very well could have been the case on Friday night, they would have helped themselves to every one of these items. But it was also apparent that they were expecting me in, that they thought I was smoking weed at the very moment they came to my door, because these detestable little shit lizards can't tell the difference between freshly-ground flower and flower that is currently on fire.
If we're gonna blame the strain that was last in my grinder for bringing the heat, it was Rabble Dabble's Do-Si-Dos. My recent samples from them are even better than the ones I reviewed a couple weeks ago and definitely worth checking out. I was planning to visit Ocean City's two dispensaries while I was in town- that was specifically the reason I was there- but if you can be thrown out of your hotel merely for possessing it, then from a tourist's perspective, what's the fucking point?
Oh, yeah. That's a major point here. I wasn't smoking in The Commander Hotel's fucking hotel room. Or the balcony. I was aware of the rules and bending backwards to comply. In retrospect, I could have done more to conceal the odor of the Gentleman's dank dank- capping the grinder when not in use, keeping my bags in an airtight jar- my neighbor had mentioned that he could smell it that morning- but it's not illegal for me to possess my medicine in your hotel, nor to prepare it. I'm also explicitly allowed to vaporize it per Maryland law, regardless of your fucking smoking policy.
The other mistake I made was staying in the "fancy" fake-ass three star The Commander Hotel to begin with. I usually avoid this situation entirely by staying some place cheaper, but I wanted a balcony and an ocean view.
I've been trying to replicate a deep calm I haven't felt in a long time, but to no avail. The realization was depressing, which is why I went to bed at 5pm on a Friday.
Anyhoo, while I finished packing, the hotel's bruiser informed me that I was not allowed back on the property, and would be charged with Trespassing if I did. What reason would I have to return? Then he asked if I had a vehicle, I responded affirmatively, and he started saying something about picking it up later if I was impaired.
Bleary-eyed, I summoned my wits to articulate that I was not, that once again, they had interrupted me sleeping with this horrendous bullshit. The cops hardly said a word. When I left the room, I could see the pair were young. One looked hardly old enough to be out of college, the other in his mid-twenties. They actually seemed to share some of my embarrassment over the situation.
Technically, I wasn't kicked out of Ocean City, just The Commander Hotel. I could have gone to the effort of getting another room, but that was unlikely on this busy weekend, and for the reasons I explained earlier, I decided to quit the place entirely.
Your Gentleman was triggered AF over the incident, but the violent revenge fantasies are winding down, and my mood has improved considerably.
The points of the story are:
- Don't stay at The Commander Hotel. Fuck their bitch asses. I hope they all get polio.
- Fuck Orbitz, too. They took The Commander Hotel's word over mine that I was smoking in the room and refused to issue even a promo code for a couple free nights. Well, you can eat my ass, too, Orbitz.
- Be more careful than I was in Ocean City in general.
- Most importantly, even in states where we can legally partake, cannabis patients and consumers are still second-class citizens.
Legalization is not the end of our fight for legitimacy, folks. It is the beginning. Getting Gestapo'd this weekend is just one small example of the injustice we still face. I'm gonna sign off checking my privilege- if I was black, I coulda been shot.